September 2014

September 30, 2014

I don’t know why it always falls on me to notice such details but the White House menu for last night’s dinner for Prime Minister Narendra Modi contained an item whose meaning I first did not understand. It says, “Eau bouillie finement”. It is obviously in French and my French being not good at all, I looked up the English meaning. It seems it means “Finely boiled water”.

I am told by sources inside the White House kitchen that the full description was “Finement bouilli eau avec une pincée de sel de chaux et de poivre” or “Finely Boiled water with a dash of lime, salt and pepper.”

There is not much mystery to the presence of this exotic sounding French food because the Indian prime minister is in the midst of his annual nine-day fast during which he consumes only water. It was not clear initially whether in light of the ritual restriction President Barack Obama should not arrange for a little more elaborate meal. Eventually though, a total ten guests were included, five from each side, after the prime minister happily said the others should go ahead and enjoy food. Otherwise the full menu might have just looked like this:

September 29, 2014

Now that standup politician Narendra Modi has done his routine and evidently killed it, it is the turn of standup comedian Aziz Ansari to follow suit. I caught this poster of Ansari at a subway station the other day which announces two shows by him at the very Madison Square Garden (MSG) which the Indian prime minister filled to the capacity plus had a spillover in the Times Square yesterday.

Ansari’s show is scheduled for October 9, barely 11 days after Modi. It is a sold out show at 7 p.m., compelling him to do one more immediately after that at 10.30 p.m. I don’t know what a sold out show translates into in terms of numbers but it would be remarkable if it means nearly the same number of people that the prime minister managed to pull. Ansari is, of course, famous for his mainstream humor rather than the ethnic variety that many other comedians of Indian descent tend to do.

I guarantee that there has never been a case where the MSG had two nearly back to back shows, one by a politician who has a sense of comedy and a comedian who has a sense of politics. Speaking of a politician who has a sense of comedy, the prime minister had repeated one of his mildly humorous anecdotes about his visit to Shanghai years ago where his interpreter gingerly asked him if India was still a land of snake charmers. Modi replied something to the effect that Indians used to play with snakes once but now they do with the mouse, as in a computer mouse. As jokes go, this barely makes the grade but it is not that bad either.

I was at the MSG event and inevitably have a few observations to make. The Indian American Community Foundation, an umbrella organization bringing together 400 other Indian American groups, did a superb job of putting up the event. The execution was flawless and I suppose it would be proper to credit Anand Shah who helmed the show in terms of its execution. Of course, he had hundreds of volunteers who all did a quietly efficient job.

In terms of the content, Modi was in the midst of a crowd that would have lapped him up even if he had read from one of those restaurant menus or bus tour schedules which are thrust in your hands on the city’s streets. It was that partisan and adulatory. He could not have taken a single wrong step nor struck a single wrong note even if had insisted on doing so. People wore T-shirts with his face imprinted on it and some carried his face mask but almost anyone who was in the general audience carried gushing praise for him. That said, he hit home all his familiar themes about the contribution of the Indian American community to India as well as America, his passion to clean up India, provide safe sanitation nationwide, homes to all Indians and cleaning up the Ganga. He spoke of India’s three main strengths unrivaled by any other country—democracy, demographic dividend and demand. When he mentioned that some in the audience sounded as if they had just been presented with awe-inspiring revelation.

Before the prime minister took the stage there were already close to 40 members of the U.S. Senate and Congress there as a sort of an opening act for Modi. Modi’s flaming orange waistcoat and ivory yellow kurta contrasted well against the nearly all black suits backdrop formed by the American politicians. I am pretty sure some of them must be enviously wondering about what the chief guest had done to deserve such a fanboy welcome. “Mo…di Mo…di” was heard frequently throughout the event.

In terms of the so-called preshow or pre-speech performances, I had expected to be left cold by the quality. I was not disappointed. There was no recognizable talent to any performance, most of which were indifferently choreographed dance numbers performed with matching mediocrity. One does not want to generalize but mediocrity is often the defining feature of such shows by the Indian American community. You get the sense that the routines are being performed by children and teenagers who have been forced into them by their zealous parents desperate to introduce them to Indian culture. Indian culture can often meet Hindi movie songs and dances. For me the most irritating part of such events is the way audience members eruct either “woooo” or “woooohooo”. If you went just by the frequency of “woooo” or “wooohooo” you might think that every performance was masterful when the fact was that none was even remotely watchable.

September 28, 2014

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Global Citizen Festival, 2014 in New York

My presence at the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park yesterday was an anomaly; an incongruity, really. It was my life’s first rock/music concert. I am happy to admit I enjoyed the 45 minutes or so that I spent there. Everyone at a rock concert is young irrespective of how old they really are. It is as if age has been suspended for the duration of the concert.

I was there because India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also to be there—he onstage and I in the media enclosure, he as a guest of honor and I , well, just there. Jay Z was there, so was Beyoncé. The Roots were there, so was No Doubt. Carrie Underwood was there, so was Fun. Alicia Keys was there, so was Sting. With actor Hugh Jackman as the MC, the concert was the place to be. When I reached the venue along with a media contingent The Roots were playing some pretty captivating stuff. I realized at that point why people go to live concerts. Life stands utterly amplified at such concerts.

Speaking of amplification, the one Indian politician who loves it more than any is Narendra Modi. His presence there may have seemed a bit odd to some but when you consider the objective of Global Citizen to end poverty by 2030 by involving global citizens, you get the reason why Modi would not have missed it. In the morning, he had addressed a somnambulant United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in a sweeping but still specific speech. The Global Citizen concert was like the UNGA with bling and hipness. It was an audience he could not have bought at any cost. It was delivered to him on the glistening backs of global celebrities and he made the most of it.

Modi’s seven-minute speech began with “How are you doing, New York? and ended with “May the force be with you.” In between, he said things like “I salute you” and “I believe in you”. He was there to harness the youthful energy and vigor and he did manage to do it. In the process, he also got himself an entrée into a world that is often out of bounds for politicians. When he concluded with the cult-like wish from ‘Star Wars’ , I could hear the audience lap it up with loud cheer. They did not expect a 64-year-old politician to attend in the first place. They did not expect him to connect with them in the second place. And they certainly did not expect him to say “May the force be with you.”

The audience seemed to love it and Jackman made sure by reiterating “What a speech!”

As I continue my Modiwatching through his maiden US tour as prime minister, it strikes me again and again how he has been on a roll for the past six months. I half expect him to say what Jim Carrey said in ‘The Mask’, “Somebody, stop me.” The winning streak is expected to continue as the prime minister travels to Washington tomorrow to meet President Barack Obama.

Incidentally, this is how Global Citizen describes itself: “Global Citizen is a tool to amplify and unite a generation’s call for justice. It’s a place for you to learn and act, to bring an end to extreme poverty. Global Citizens know that a world that deprives 1.2 billion people of their basic rights and opportunities is unjust and unacceptable. We celebrate the efforts made to cut extreme poverty by half, but recognise more still needs to be done. We know that people living in extreme poverty are working hard themselves, and that we need to learn and take action to change the rules that trap them in broken systems. We use Global Citizen to learn more about issues, so we can take effective action for change and find opportunities to support campaigns and organisations creating sustainable change. Right now Global Citizen is in launch phase, but in coming weeks and months it will feature new issues, with the latest information and action opportunities, so you can take effective action for change. There are more than 250,000 Global Citizens already taking action around the world - we hope that you join us.”

September 27, 2014

In my memory of having reported on every prime minister since Rajiv Gandhi in1984 there has been none who inspires the kind of near manic if partisan adulation that Narendra Modi does. Of course, there was a period soon after Gandhi won an unprecedented mandate that he enjoyed what could be called a comparable following. However, it was nowhere close to as ideologically assertive and voluble as it is for Modi.

Yesterday, while waiting for the prime minister to reach the New York Palace Hotel in Manhattan, I had a sampling of that virulent enthusiasm. Indian men and women, predominantly Gujarati, turned out in large numbers and appeared as if they had had an indescribably blissful awakening triggered by Modi’s presence. I saw a man, dressed up in the full Indian regalia of maroon red dhoti with intricate bordering in golden thread, an embroidered kurta and a long streak of read smear on his forehead animatedly talking on his mobile phone. He was sweating and as a result his tika had begun to spread like an alien organism gradually taking over his forehead. He sounded both ecstatic that he was there where Modi was but was equally concerned why the person he was talking to on phone had still not shown up and missing out on deliverance. He was talking so loud that for a while I wondered about the necessity of having a phone at all.

After Modi obliged the waiting throngs with personal greetings via a walkthrough, there were many who still looked dazed and overcome. I overheard someone say, “Narendrabhai no lal coat joyo? Boss, hoon pan evo sivdavis.” (Did you see his red—it was actually burgundy—coat? I am going to get one stitched like that?).” The last time I heard any Indian comment specifically on what the prime minister wore was when Rajiv Gandhi used to wear his padded vests during Delhi’s winter but that was about it.

In Modi’s case his entire wardrobe, which seems to be considerable and whose number is not known, has been a matter of great interest. I doubt very much if that burgundy bandhgala will make an appearance again anytime soon or ever. There is no way to find out but I am curious to know the number of clothes he is carrying on this visit. After all, the official jet that he travels by has to be rather empty what with the media having been kept out of it. My guess is that for his five-day visit he must be carrying at least 15 to 20 pairs. Unlike prime ministers before him, Modi does not always wear the preferred white churidar and kurta. His colors are varied and eclectic. For his formal meeting with President Barack Obama he may settle for the more sober black bandhgala and trousers but you never know. It may be for the first time that the White House will have a male head of state as a guest who might take the attention away from the First Lady’s much talked about fashion choices.

September 26, 2014

Architecture is about enveloping empty space such that it does not feel stifled. Great architects take empty space and redirect it through compelling design aesthetics. I have been thinking of such things for the past couple of days because of having to report out of the United Nations building. Some of you might know that the UN building complex was designed by the two greats Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier along with a panel of other architects. The stamp of the two is all over the building complex but let me just point out two features. Not that I know much but it seems more Niemeyer than Corbusier because it was the former whose design was chosen over the latter.

For a complex that is as big as the UN building is, it feels remarkably light on the eye. When you approach the main general assembly building from side despite that fact that you are looking a structure with 39 floors, it is still so easy on the eye. It reminds me of the monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ Yesterday between meetings I went out and looked at it closely. I had the same eerie feeling of magnetism that the apes in the movie do when they look at the monolith. If there was a pile of bones, I may have picked up one and hurled it high. But I digress.

Even the huge main entrance hall (see the pictures) gives you a feeling of airiness despite empty space having been enveloped in these high rising walls and Japanese screen-like front. That is where an architect’s sense of design kicks in. Because of my architect brother Trilochan, I have been exposed to architectural concepts for a long time. I automatically notice these details.

It is a terrific complex to make movies. Over the years, the building’s cinematic appeal has attracted many filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘North by Northwest’ (1959) or Sydney Pollack’s more recent ‘The Interpreter’ (2005), to shoot there. The striking thing about any great building is that you can point your camera anywhere and produce compelling shots. People should not forget it is not their talent as photographers but the architecture of the building that does the job.

I suspect not a lot of people come to the UN building and look at the building because of who designed it. I do because I do that sort of thing.

September 25, 2014

New York is a people watcher’s paradise and in that the United Nations Building at this time of year is even better. Reporting the UN General Assembly has its rewards—being able to watch people from around the world is one of them. It is riveting. I did that for about three hours yesterday waiting for India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj to wrap up her seven bilateral meetings. Waiting, incidentally, is intrinsic to journalism of this kind. You wait and wait and wait and then wonder why you are waiting and then forget that you are waiting at all. That is where people watching is a reward.

The density of black business suits worn by male diplomats is occasionally broken by a strikingly colorful printed African shirt here or handsomely tied ornate turban there sported by women. There are so many languages being spoken simultaneously that the fusion of all those seem to create a new global language. For a few seconds I thought I understood that new global language but not quite because as soon as the babble made sense it also stopped making it. It was like thousands of words climbing atop each other, each in a rush to get to the summit of this hybrid language mountain and then come crashing down like an avalanche of incomprehension.

At the UN, everyone walks with a great sense of purpose and as if the next global crisis would devour the world if they walked any differently or any slowly. There are little throngs of people everywhere you look. Each throng has one person, usually a man, who is the center that holds everybody else’s attention and loyalty. He is most likely a foreign minister or a deputy prime minister or sometimes even a president. There are aides whispering things into the ears of the man in the center from many different directions even as he goes about nodding to indicate that he has understood the intricacy of the upcoming bilateral or multilateral engagement.

Each such throng is like an organism in itself. Every part of it moves in unison even while performing tasks unique to them. Servility grows in concentric circles. The center is not servile at all because he or occasionally she is the reason why everyone else is servile. The outermost circle consists of utterly obsequious and servile minions who, paradoxically, also have the most possibility to break free from the gravitational pull of the central figure because of their sheer distance. They hang on because otherwise they would go floating about aimlessly in this vast diplomatic space.

One comes across the so-called movers and shakers of the world here. I caught former Vice President Al Gore during the climate summit that preceded the General Assembly. I tried presenting myself as a correspondent of a rural newspaper to him but my voice just skidded past him. It was as if it had bounced off a smooth bubble around him. Because it is the UN, all those who come here are who’s who somewhere on the planet. Each carries their own little ego as illustrated by the size of the entourage. Of course, the real powerful ones such as President Barack Obama are never found urgently rushing through the halls and lobbies. They don’t carry any files or folders or sheaf of papers. They magically materialize at famous General Assembly podium, say their piece and disappear.

And then there are those like me who are happily inconsequential and who wait. Bilateral meetings go on. For instance, Swaraj had seven yesterday between 2.30 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. They included U.K. Secretary of State Philip Hammond, Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Ahmed Karti, Maldives Foreign Affairs Minister Dunya Maumoon, Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Borge Brende, Kyrgyz Foreign Affairs Minister Abdyldaev Erlan Bekeshovich, Greece Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos and Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister Aminu Wali. It was a diplomatic version of speed-dating. The only difference is that the purpose is not find a life partner at the end but quickly engage with countries of interest—strategic or economic or both.

Looking at the Maldivian Foreign Minister Maumoon, I was reminded of my visit to the Indian Ocean islands in the 1980s and the story that I wrote about the likely danger that the islands could soon be under water because of the rising sea levels. They are still above water as evidenced by the presence of Dunya Maumoon. Incidentally, Dunya means world.

September 24, 2014

In a flawless first, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is now spinning around our red neighbor. That the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is the the world’s first space agency to get its Mars mission right in the first attempt is remarkable no matter how you look at it. However, the ISRO scientists will be the first ones not to exult over it too much because space missions are notoriously unreliable given the sheer odds against them. If only 21 out of 51 Mars missions had succeeded before this one, it is not because of any flagrant incompetence by other space agencies but the intrinsic nature of the enormous variables involved in them.

I had pointed out a few days ago how cool it would be—I did indeed mean cool—if two missions from Earth would successfully reach Mars in a span of two days or so. That cool did indeed happen on Wednesday as ISRO scientists tracked MOM and waited for a final confirmation from MOM that it had safely inserted itself into a Martian orbit. At $74 million total, the Indian mission is the cheapest that has ever been. Some homes in California and Florida cost much more than that. Forget homes in America, India’s own Mukesh Ambani could personally fund ten or such missions by staying in a smaller home than his reputedly billion dollar tower in Mumbai. When you consider that NASA spent $671 million on its Maven mission, you get the scale of how much cheaper the Indian endeavor has been. Of course, at some level space missions must not be judged by how much we spend on them but how well we do them. I have been a consistent cheerleader to NASA’s missions over the decades.

For a country like India, which has been for the past two decades or so tapping its real economic and technological potential, an unqualified success such as MOM can have an extraordinarily inspirational effect. It can also force the country’s young to learn to recognize real accomplishment when they see one and not get googli-eyed in the embarrassing starstruckness* over trivialities served up by the worlds of cricket and movies. MOM is a triumph of the scientist forever wary of shortcuts. It was a mission which had to be painfully tightly run given its meager resources and burdensome expectations. No one knows better than ISRO scientists that every mission is unique in its challenges even if much of what it takes in terms of building spacecraft, launching it and setting it on course may feel like cookie cutter. There are always things that can go wrong when you are talking journeys spanning hundreds of millions of kilometers and the time lag they entail.

The success of MOM places extra pressure on ISRO to deliver high technology on the cheap but it would be a great disservice to the scientific community if its frugal pricing is one of the predominant takeaways from the mission. It is tremendous that they did it so efficiently by stretching every conceivable resource but do not force them into that corner permanently. On its part, ISRO will have to get out of that mindset that it must forever do things by constantly looking at its budget. If there is any agency that eminently deserves budgetary flexibility and license, it is ISRO.

I have a few observations to make about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech after the successful Martian entry. In keeping with the scale of the mission though, I will spare you such political inconsequentialities.

September 23, 2014

(I wrote this onboard an Amtrak train yesterday but could not post it because there was no net connectivity)

Amtrak is like the Rajdhani Express but without the served food, pillows and blankets. There is a dining car, of course, but who can beat the tender loving care of the Indian Railways employees plying you with frequently heated food and blanket even when not asked and more when indeed asked?

My journey from Chicago’s Union Station to New York’s Penn Station is little less than half accomplished when I write this post. Yellow sodium lights of the passing stations flicker like candles in the winds as my train hobbles past. The extent of standardization in terms of the look and feel in America, about which I have written before, ensures that you feel as if you are moving without really getting anywhere. That is because much of what you see at stations and around them is often exactly the same. McDonald’s, for instance, or ATM machines or Subway joints or Domino’s Pizzas are so standardized that the feeling of having covered any distance at all is completely erased. That and the fact that I have not slept all that well may also be making my mind play tricks.

The train, or at least the car that I am in, seems like about 40% full which means that I managed to get two seats for the price of one. And yet, even with those two seats I couldn’t sleep because my body is not used to the fetal, Houdini like contortions needed to fit into tight spaces. I stayed awake mostly interrupted by sullen sleep. The transition from the dark of night to the light of day is like a gradient of black to grey to ivory white to mauve yellow. As I write this I am still going through the deep grey part of the gradient, the kind when silhouetted trees managed to look mysterious in an unfriendly way.

Returning to New York after three years makes me wonder whether I may have lost the city’s urgent gait and the look of “don’t talk to me sense of purpose”. I think it is entirely possible that I may feel like a bewildered villager or, at the very least, a somnambulant suburbanite when I finally reach. It is equally possible that I may slip into the New York state of mind of effortlessly.

Staying with an old and dear friend, not to mention an omnipresent photojournalist, Jay Mandal has no downsides to it. Nothing in terms of South Asia-America news happens in New York and Washington D.C. without first seeking Jay’s permission. It is only when he approves that news chooses to to do what it must—that is break for others. Jay and I will spend the next week covering the first visit by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United Nations, Madison Square Garden and the White House. Since the prime minister is “not the not working” kind of man as he told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, I suspect the media will have its hands full. There is a contingent of Indian media that will be covering the visit. In keeping with his policy of keeping an arm’s length from the media, I am told a majority of Indian journalists is traveling on their own, flying commercial. The tradition until recently had been that senior Indian journalists were given a free ride on the prime minister’s official aircraft. It was a junket with some pretension of serious news reporting. Modi the “not the not working” type will have none of that.

I think I have stretched a thin story thinner enough to write this post on board Amtrak.

P.S.: The train was about six hours late. I reached NYC only around midnight to be received at the Penn Station by the ever gracious Jay. He had no reason to do that, other than that that’s what he does. He shows grace and generosity.

The train made stops at every station and everything that resembled a station and everything that did not. I thought at least twice or thrice it even slowed down to gossip with passing trains. It is for the first time in my life that I spent 25 hours on a train. Since it got so delayed, we were offered a choice of food, which included beef stew and rice. Being a painful vegetarian I had to settle for a pack of roasted almonds.

September 20, 2014

Befitting the stature of a rural correspondent, I will take a train tomorrow from Chicago to New York to spend the next ten days reporting India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit. I leave at 6.40 p.m. Sunday and reach New York a little after 7 p.m. on Monday. That is longer than flying to New Delhi from Chicago. Joe Lahsin, an American friend of mine commented on my train journey plans saying, “How very 1940s of you?”

With all my Gaon Connection newspaper credentials in place now, it is official that I will report for India’s first professionally run and major award winning rural newspaper. As Neelesh Misra, the founder of the newspaper, pointed out, “We are committed to constantly breaking the stereotypes about what rural readers should get to read and watch. We created these stereotypes.” So while I might look for some rural angle to stories, I intend reporting the visit very much like I would report it for an urban newspaper. I have never patronized my Gaon Connection readership in whatever few columns I have written so far and I intend to continue to serve them in a similar fashion. I might choose to give them a broader context simply because there are no rural newspapers doing it for them.

I know how utterly choreographed and controlled the media interaction of the US and India leaders are in Washington and therefore have no expectations of being allowed to ask a question of either or both. Given half a chance though, I would like to ask President Barack Obama whether the concerns and aspirations of the world’s rural population even remotely figure in his diplomatic dealings around the world. India alone accounts for over 833 million rural population, according to the 2011 census. In case you have not already understood it, that number alone is the world’s third largest population by itself. I seriously wonder whether bilateral relations between India and any other country, not to mention the world’s biggest economy of America, even factor that aspect in.

I think this is where Neelesh’s point about rural stereotypes comes in. While rural populations may have their own unique demands, their aspirations and concerns are not necessarily distinct from the urban population merely because they live in villages. Of course, developments models have to be tweaked to meet rural requirements but when it comes to aspirational objectives, they are pretty similar. As Gaon Connection has been reporting about the changing attitudes in villages, the information and communication technology revolution has ensured that rural Indians can be as up to speed with what is going on around the world as urban Indians. This is by far the crudest hint I can drop to President Obama and Prime Minister Modi’s media handlers to let me, as a correspondent of a rural newspaper, ask one question at their joint press engagement.